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Raytheon rolled out the SeaRAM anti-ship missle defense system.
What is significant about this anti-missile defense system is that it can defeat the Mach 2.5 Russian "Sunburn" anti-ship missle. Until the rollout of the SeaRAM, the Russians have enjoyed a very dangerous advantage in anti-ship missile technology. In order to destablize the power of the United States, the Russians have been selling the Sunburn missles to China. The Russians have refused to sell them to the West, and despite the best efforts of it's spies, the west has very little information on them. (Thanks Klinton for passing up the deal when they were offered!)
The Sunburn missles are capable of delivering conventional and nuclear warheads to sea-based targets.
The standard US Navy anti-missle defense system is too slow to engage the Sunburn. This system, called the Phalanx, has only about 2.5 seconds to react to the Sunburn. In multiple tests, the Phalanx failed to engage high speed missiles in time to protect a ship.
Speed aside, the other threat the Sunburn poses is it's destructive force. The Sunburn skims the sea and pops up at the last seconds to slam down on the decks of ships. The combined speed and warhead payload would be devastating to all ships in the US arsenal.
The Chinese have purchased a number of Sunburn missiles from the Russians and are counting on them to neutralize the threat from the United States Navy in any scenario involving Tiawan.
One has to do some digging to find out how effective the system is. Raytheon isn't really saying much about it's performance, but I've managed to dig up some info.
"In 10 scenarios, real Anti-Ship Missiles and supersonic Vandal target missiles (Mach 2.5) were intercepted and destroyed under realistic conditions. RAM Block 1 achieved first-shot kills on every target in its presented scenarios, including sea-skimming, diving and highly maneuvering profiles in both single and stream attacks."
"With these test firings RAM demonstrated its unparalleled success against today's most challenging threats. Cumulatively to date more than 180 missiles have been fired against anti-ship missiles and other targets, achieving a success rate over 95%"
The SeaRAM is a drop in replacement for the Phalanx system. The RAM missle itself is a mach 2, second generation derivative of the Sidewinder and Stinger missles. It features BOTH infrared and radar based target tracking, allowing for use against future low radar cross section (stealthy) anti-ship missles. The effective range of the RAM missile is 11 miles. The CIWS part of the SeaRAM can track multiple targets and fire multiple missles at a single target. Each SeaRAM platform holds 11 RAM missiles

Unless the fire/test whole bunch of Sunburn missiles against this system and it stops them then I might believe it. But as of yet it's only speculations and guesses.
You can't test it against something which you don't have. It's like experimenting on a lab rat that is not in the lab and guess what would happen to that rat if you inject it with something.

Unless the fire/test whole bunch of Sunburn missiles against this system and it stops them then I might believe it. But as of yet it's only speculations and guesses.
You can't test it against something which you don't have. It's like experimenting on a lab rat that is not in the lab and guess what would happen to that rat if you inject it with something.

Just like the scenario that China will beat the US in a war. Pure speculation.

Unless the fire/test whole bunch of Sunburn missiles against this system and it stops them then I might believe it. But as of yet it's only speculations and guesses.
You can't test it against something which you don't have. It's like experimenting on a lab rat that is not in the lab and guess what would happen to that rat if you inject it with something.

It remains to be seen, in combat, if it can defeat the sunburn - remember the USS Stark could also defeat a missile like the Exocet ( in theory ) but didn't, and nearly got cut in half. Still it is good news that they have developed a system that should perform well against these types of threats.

That article is marketting. The reality is that during the cold war when the Russians were likely to use Sunburns (the sea based model entered service before the falklands war in 1982) the US had no reliable defence. After the cold war they have upgraded their Standard IIs to perform the role. (Standards fly rather faster than SEARAM... in some versions the Standard can kill aircraft at over 150km range, while Searam is a combination of Hellfire, Sidewinder, and Stinger missiles and is tiny.)

The Sunburn flys at 300m initially and then dives down to below 7m for the last 70km or so. Travelling at mach 2.2 it covers about 750m/s and performs manouvers just before impact to avoid gunfire and make interception difficult.

The Sunburn has largely been replaced in Russian service by the Onyx (export name Yakhont... joint Indian and Russian version is called Brahmos). Half the weight, longer range, slightly faster.

I was shocked when I learned the facts about these Russian-made cruise missiles. The problem is that so many of us suffer from two common misperceptions. The first follows from our assumption that Russia is militarily weak, as a result of the breakup of the old Soviet system. Actually, this is accurate, but it does not reflect the complexities. Although the Russian navy continues to rust in port, and the Russian army is in disarray, in certain key areas Russian technology is actually superior to our own. And nowhere is this truer than in the vital area of anti-ship cruise missile technology, where the Russians hold at least a ten-year lead over the US. The second misperception has to do with our complacency in general about missiles-as-weapons probably attributable to the pathetic performance of Saddam Hussein's Scuds during the first Gulf war: a dangerous illusion that I will now attempt to rectify.

Many years ago, Soviet planners gave up trying to match the US Navy ship for ship, gun for gun, and dollar for dollar. The Soviets simply could not compete with the high levels of US spending required to build up and maintain a huge naval armada. They shrewdly adopted an alternative approach based on strategic defense. They searched for weaknesses, and sought relatively inexpensive ways to exploit those weaknesses. The Soviets succeeded: by developing several supersonic anti-ship missiles, one of which, the SS-N-22 Sunburn, has been called "the most lethal missile in the world today."

After the collapse of the Soviet Union the old military establishment fell upon hard times. But in the late1990s Moscow awakened to the under-utilized potential of its missile technology to generate desperately needed foreign exchange. A decision was made to resuscitate selected programs, and, very soon, Russian missile technology became a hot export commodity. Today, Russian missiles are a growth industry generating much-needed cash for Russia, with many billions in combined sales to India, China, Viet Nam, Cuba, and also Iran. In the near future this dissemination of advanced technology is likely to present serious challenges to the US. Some have even warned that the US Navy's largest ships, the massive carriers, have now become floating death traps, and should for this reason be mothballed.

The Sunburn missile has never seen use in combat, to my knowledge, which probably explains why its fearsome capabilities are not more widely recognized. Other cruise missiles have been used, of course, on several occasions, and with devastating results. During the Falklands War, French-made Exocet missiles, fired from Argentine fighters, sunk the HMS Sheffield and another ship. And, in 1987, during the Iran-Iraq war, the USS Stark was nearly cut in half by a pair of Exocets while on patrol in the Persian Gulf. On that occasion US Aegis radar picked up the incoming Iraqi fighter (a French-made Mirage), and tracked its approach to within 50 miles. The radar also "saw" the Iraqi plane turn about and return to its base. But radar never detected the pilot launch his weapons. The sea-skimming Exocets came smoking in under radar and were only sighted by human eyes moments before they ripped into the Stark, crippling the ship and killing 37 US sailors.

The 1987 surprise attack on the Stark exemplifies the dangers posed by anti-ship cruise missiles. And the dangers are much more serious in the case of the Sunburn, whose specs leave the sub-sonic Exocet in the dust. Not only is the Sunburn much larger and faster, it has far greater range and a superior guidance system. Those who have witnessed its performance trials invariably come away stunned. According to one report, when the Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani visited Moscow in October 2001 he requested a test firing of the Sunburn, which the Russians were only too happy to arrange. So impressed was Ali Shamkhani that he placed an order for an undisclosed number of the missiles.

The Sunburn can deliver a 200-kiloton nuclear payload, or: a 750-pound conventional warhead, within a range of 100 miles, more than twice the range of the Exocet. The Sunburn combines a Mach 2.1 speed (two times the speed of sound) with a flight pattern that hugs the deck and includes "violent end maneuvers" to elude enemy defenses. The missile was specifically designed to defeat the US Aegis radar defense system. Should a US Navy Phalanx point defense somehow manage to detect an incoming Sunburn missile, the system has only seconds to calculate a fire solution not enough time to take out the intruding missile. The US Phalanx defense employs a six-barreled gun that fires 3,000 depleted-uranium rounds a minute, but the gun must have precise coordinates to destroy an intruder "just in time."

I think its pretty arrogant to talk of US carriers being deathtraps in need of mothballing based merely on the threat of a untried weapon system.

Reminds of the turn of the century talk about the torpedo and the French using torpedo boats that will make the battleship obsolete. (Because the French couldnt match the british in $$$ and ship building capacity.)